Limitless, John Gold [best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

experience that helps me realize that there’s a central flow of consciousness that coordinates the others. I hear it whispering to me: fight, fight, fight. But is that just the pain making me hallucinate? Or is it LJ taking himself to a new level of self-consciousness? I don’t sense him though, and that’s presumably because I’m not in danger.

At some point during the eight hours, it hits me that there’s nothing left around the tree. The gravitational well has even sucked the soil up into the sky. The ash is gone, leaving an enormous crater behind. The stone thirty meters down settles, the tree lurches as it hangs over the edge, and its roots are all that’s holding it up. The power given off by the spell hurts my teeth. It feels like all the little blood vessels in my body are popping, my joints are vibrating, and my limbs are about to be torn out. The pain wrenches tears from my eyes. Such pain!

Fourth-order resonance activated

 

The thirty-meter gravitational well expands to three hundred meters, instantly pulling everything in the area up into the sky. I’m crushed into the ground as the tree’s branches start cracking. The entire world is disappearing into a bloody stream.

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop! Stop it!

Note! Health warning! Central nervous system overload!

 

I deactivate my emotions and turn off the spell.

Fourth-order resonance deactivated

 

My head is spinning, my arms and legs are twitching, and LJ is panicking, but I feel great.

Achievement received: Titanbane. Three hundred and forty-second rank.

Kill an opponent 17100 levels higher than you

Reward: +1710 to all attributes

Achievement received: Boundless

Win a duel with a god, forcing them to expend all their divine strength

Reward: +500 to all attributes

The words are so beautiful… My thinking is strange and sluggish. Why am I clinging to the tree? It hits me that LJ has decided to play his feline games, though I’m not sure why I’ve been falling for so long. Wait… Why am I falling at all?

With a crunch, I hit the ground and break all my bones, the saving darkness allowing me to fall asleep.

I wake up in the same tree I was falling in. About three minutes have gone by, and the undead god is still nowhere to be found. New roots start to reach out along the entire trunk of the tree. LJ used panacea, and now he’s working with my life aura to give me a better shot at surviving if my enemy shows up. But he still hasn’t.

My eyes open and close separately; the left half of my body convulses. Activating the resonance almost killed me in reality and came just shy of depriving me of my character in Project Chrysalis.

The rage no longer presses down on me even when I step away from the tree. Did I pass the test?

As I slowly gather myself, I start moving along the rest area in the direction from which the rage used to emanate. A bouquet of rural aromas hits my nose, and I realize I’m standing at the edge of an enormous city.

Current location: City of Nirim. Region from the first Project Chrysalis era.

 

My brain is having a hard time comprehending what’s going on. A constant stream of locals pours out of the white shroud behind me. A father is leading two young children by the hand, while his wife carries a crying baby. They were lucky to get here together, spared the bitter loneliness of searching for each other.

I’m having an even harder time thinking, my streams of consciousness get mixed up, and I collapse onto my knees. The left side of my body stops responding completely.

Critical health condition

Emergency withdrawal from Project Chrysalis in 3… 2… 1…

 

Logout

 

∞ ∞ ∞

Again, I’m dreaming about the field of flowers and the girl in the white dress. I feel the warmth of her hands, the care she takes of me and of my health. God, if you’re real, thank you for this dream. I don’t have the words to describe the wonderful feeling. She protects me and hurts when I hurt, almost like the mother I never had. I want to stay here in this field of flowers with you. It may be a dream, but for me, it’s finer than the real world with its pain and suffering. Please, stay with me. No, don’t leave, mama! Don’t leave me!

I’m jostled awake by somebody’s strong hands. My doctor is peevishly reproaching me for being so careless about my health.

God, why do you hate me? Why so much suffering? Am I really such a bad person? Enough. I decide I’m going to depend on nothing but my own strength. No more charity.

The nurse is shaking me, trying to wake me up.

“Are you awake yet?” I realize it’s Claude without opening my eyes.

“You know… I’ve only ever wanted one thing in this life. I want to go home, smell my mother’s cooking, and hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen. That will tell me that she’s home and okay. And that will be enough for me.”

“What? Ribonz, wake up! You’re in bad shape, so we have you here in the clinic.”

My eyes fill with tears, so I cover them with a hand.

“Everything’s fine, Claude. Everything’s going to be fine.”

You don’t need to know what’s in my heart. Everyone spends their time in this tiny world dealing with their own problems, leaving little room to care for others.

I’m taken back to my room three days later. This time, I managed to avoid getting overworked and exhausting my nervous system. There’s going to be a new course of physical therapy and vitamins coming up.

Claude says swimming will help me more than the med capsule, so he forces me into the pool. I feel sick, my thoughts are jumbled, and my hands shake, but I paddle away toward that two-kilometer mark. I’m back to square one.

∞ ∞ ∞

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There are hundreds of buildings in the city. People live here, in no hurry to go anywhere or do anything. Parents watch their children play, elderly people chit-chat,